Prelude to NATO exercise[edit] Operation RYAN[edit] Main article: Operation RYAN A KGB Report on 1981 reporting that the KGB had "implemented measures to strengthen intelligence work in order to prevent a possible sudden outbreak of war by the enemy." To do this, the KGB "actively obtained information on military and strategic issues, and the aggressive military and political plans of imperialism [the United States] and its accomplices," and "enhanced the relevance and effectiveness of its active intelligence abilities." From the The National Security Archive. The greatest catalyst to the Able Archer war scare occurred more than two years earlier. In a May 1981 closed-session meeting of senior KGB officers and Soviet leaders, General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev and KGB chairman Yuri Andropov bluntly announced that the United States was preparing a secret nuclear attack on the USSR. To combat this threat, Andropov announced, the KGB and GRU would begin Operation RYAN. RYAN (РЯН) was a Russian acronym for "Nuclear Missile Attack" (Ракетное Ядерное Нападение); Operation RYAN was the largest, most comprehensive peacetime intelligence-gathering operation in Soviet history. Agents abroad were charged with monitoring the figures who would decide to launch a nuclear attack, the service and technical personnel who would implement the attack, and the facilities from which the attack would originate. In all probability, the goal of Operation RYAN was to discover the first intent of a nuclear attack and then preempt it.[10][11] The impetus for the implementation of Operation RYAN is still largely unknown. However, the Nazi sneak attack and subsequent invasion on the Soviet Union in 1941 has remained a vital lesson for the Soviet armed forces ever since.[citation needed] Oleg Gordievsky, the highest-ranking KGB official ever to defect, suspected that it was born of the increased "Soviet Paranoia" coupled with "Reaganite Rhetoric". Gordievsky conjectured that Brezhnev and Andropov, who "were very, very old-fashioned and easily influenced ... by Communist dogmas", truly believed that an antagonistic Ronald Reagan would push the nuclear button and relegate the Soviet Union to the literal "ash heap of history".[12][13][14] Central Intelligence Agency historian Benjamin B. Fischer lists several concrete occurrences that likely led to the birth of RYAN. The first of these was the use of psychological operations (PSYOP) that began soon after President Reagan took office.
Posted on: Sun, 16 Jun 2013 18:44:24 +0000
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